Simple but creative ways to use leftovers to make food out of ‘trash’: A NPR interview with Shuggie Murphy, chef and editor

3 cups great northern beans, soaked, cooked in a flavorful vegetable stock. Substitute 12 cup chopped garlic with 12 cup sundried tomatoes in oil, 12 tin Spanish anchovies in oil, and 4 cups tired greens.

There are plenty of ways to use food in the fridge. To help you get started, NPR asked Shuggie’s chef Murphy to share some ideas. Below you’ll find three of his creative yet simple recipes that make use of commonly leftover items.

One third of the world’s planet-warming pollution comes from the processes that make food, from clearing land and raising cattle to packaging and cooking ingredients. The food waste that ends up rotting in landfills is particularly problematic.

“To look at the ugly food or the imperfect food, that it doesn’t have to be the best of everything, is a relatively new way for people to look at their food,” said Jordan Bow, the founder of the distributor Royal Hawaiian Seafood, and Shuggie’s main seafood source for oft-discarded fish parts like halibut cheeks and various types of bycatch. The chefs need to be innovative and not just do what everyone else does.

Like a few other sustainability-focused restaurants and chains in the U.S. (e.g. Emmer & Rye Hospitality Group in Austin and San Antonio, Texas, and Lighthouse in Brooklyn, New York) Shuggie’s sources food that local producers cannot sell because there’s a surplus, it looks irregular, or it’s past its prime.

Source: One restaurant has a way to fight food waste: Making food out of ‘trash’

Food Independence Gardens: Giving away food to support needy communities in Washington, Washington, and the City of Santa Rosa at the end of the harvesting season

According to research from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, people are spending more on eating out in this country than they are at home, and the restaurant industry was responsible for almost 10 million tons of leftover food in 2022, according to 2022 data from ReFED.

Methane traps more heat than carbon dioxide, which causes global warming. Humans are the main cause of methane emissions from fossil fuels, agriculture and food waste.

If everyone ate food close to its sell-bydate, we would be able to reduce the impacts of climate change.

Climate change is affecting our food, and our food is affecting the climate. NPR is dedicating a week to stories and conversations about the search for solutions.

There are dozens of sites across the city called Food Independence Gardens, or FIGs. tons of food has been given away by the organization.

Thompson founded Food is Free Tacoma in 2015, which eventually turned into the nonprofit organization Food is Free Washington. Food is Free volunteers grow produce for needy people in public areas, and in residents’ front and backyards.

Paula Moran said that there are people who do this every day to make a living. “If you come out and you volunteer one day a year, big deal, but at least it gives you an appreciation of how hard people work.”

In the fall of 2015, after a wet and uncertain growing season, volunteers gathered at Kimball Fruit farms to pick up fruit. The process entails picking leftover produce to share with people in need before it goes bad.

Compost can have a strong impact where it ends up. The food waste collected from homes in the city is being used to support almond orchards outside the city.

California requires municipal food waste recycling, so it would have been much easier for the staff at the school to recycle their food waste.

The K-8 students at the North Hollywood school put up five-foot containers to house food waste that was saved from the landfill.

A community-based approach for restoring oysters in the Gulf of South: Impact of global climate change on oyster shells in Oyster Reefs

There are a few community led solutions to the latter. The scale of a problem sometimes benefits from community-wide approaches, because there are many powerful changes that can start at home.

Oyster reefs in the Gulf South have taken a hit from climate change. Returning oyster shells to the water helps more oysters grow in their place to play an important role in their ecosystem. They help with water quality, give a home to fish, crabs, and other animals, and help with erosion, by protecting the shoreline.